Gaming, something that lots of people do.  All types of games from role playing games to racing games. Gaming can have many effects.

Ronald Tumbokon, an his website Raise Smart Kids, offers 25 plus positive and negative effects of video games!

“When a child plays a game such as The Incredible Machine, Angry Birds or Cut The Rope, he trains his brain to come up with creative ways to solve puzzles and other problems in short bursts,” Tumbokon wrote.

Tumbokon also wrote that games force anyone to really think about their next move and how they could approach a certain situation within a game.

Shane Mapes (‘19) loves playing games.  Some of his favorite types of games to play are some sports games as well as some shooting games like COD.

“They can be a great activity to talk to people that you can’t see in person. They can help you in the real world by helping you make quicker decisions. The potential of making friends through games,” Mapes said.

An article on Mom Junction, written by Sudipta Jana, is about the positive and negative effects of gaming written by Sudipta Jana.  She wrote about how gaming can help with failures within life and the cognitive enhancements of gaming and how playing for hours affect how a student performs in school.

“Video gaming can enhance multiple cognitive skills such as better allocation of attention, visual processing, memory, reasoning, and perception, according to a research published by the American Psychological Association,” Jana wrote.

With gaming there will always be negatives Research from Sudipta shows that even through the positives there will always be negatives.

“Playing video games for long hours can affect your teen’s performance in school. Studies have shown that a higher amount of time spent in playing onscreen games can be associated with lower academic performance,” Sudipta wrote.

Noah Degrechie (‘19) enjoys gaming and plays whenever he can.

“I play games because it gives me something to do on my free time and it makes me not bored,” Degrechie said.

Degrechie also went on to say that he plays Madden or Diablo 3 to relax and calm down.

With all the positives with gaming there is a negative that most people didn’t know about.

An article by McGill University about “Playing with your brain: Negative impact of some action video games.”  talks about how some shooter games can affect your brain or some action games.

“Even if the current results show that certain human-computer interactions can decrease grey matter in the brain, the long-term consequences of this loss need to be further studied,” McGill University wrote.

This could mean that when we play these games that we are going to become more and more reliant on some type of navigation.

Ronaldo Tumbokon included that video games may cause harm to the brain.

“A 2017 study from the Université de Montréal suggests that playing action video games may actually harm the brain. Most study participants mainly use an area of the brain called the caudate nucleus,” study done by University of Buffalo

The caudate nucleus is the part of the brain that is vital to how the brain learns, as well as processing memories.  People who play a lot of games may have damage caused to this area of the brain.

Although gaming has positive and negative effects, people will continue to be obsessed with their animation of zombies and racing cars.